


Episode: Arcadia

by dksfwm



Series: Untitled Drabbles and One-Shots [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13018761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dksfwm/pseuds/dksfwm
Summary: Post-ep for "Arcadia"





	Episode: Arcadia

If he can successfully requisition a basketball hoop for their fake house in their fake-married life, then she sure as hell can ask for separate beds. And a couch, too, for good measure.

The only problem, now, was that one of those beds had been destroyed earlier this evening, courtesy of… of… whatever the hell that thing was that ripped Big Mike to shreds. And apparently also attacked Mr. Gogolak for all he was worth.

And truthfully, the couch was much too small for anyone to sleep on; well, for him at least. But she almost lost her life tonight and was not about to give up a potential night of actual rest, surrendering to cramped knees and backaches associated with couch-sleeping. He may have majored in Psychology, but she wonders if he took a course on how to effectively sleep on a couch during his time at Oxford. Why did they give them a two-seater instead of a three? 

At least they figured out what killed the Klines and can now get as far away as possible from The Falls at Arcadia. Tomorrow, however. Which means one more night of playing house.

She can get through this.  
  
***  
  
She's sitting criss-cross on top of the bedspread at the head of the “guest” bed, the bed that he had been using, glasses perched on the tip of her nose and her laptop precariously balanced in her lap. Case notes are fanned out and she's furiously typing away. Lamps on each side of the bed flicked on, intended to make it easy for her to read her notes, but inevitably illuminating her, as well, auburn hair radiant from the golden glow.

He stands there at the doorway, clutching a pillow, realizing, not for the first time that week, how desperately he wants to crawl into bed next to her. It was his bed, after all, and the couch downstairs won’t accommodate his oversized, lanky form.

“Gee, Scully, if Queequeg hadn't been eaten by that alligator a few years ago, he would have met the under-sixteen-pounds-of-pet requirement and we really would have been the picture of domesticity.”

She glares and he smirks, and he thinks about how if their faces were to be captured, frozen in time, at any given moment, they would most likely reflect exactly the expressions they’re making now.  
  
***  
  
He’s a smart-ass who loves to test her patience; tonight, it is very thin. She wonders where he got the pillow from. Probably the only piece of décor salvageable from the master bedroom. She had been in there just long enough to throw every article of clothing she brought haphazardly back into her suitcase and retrieve her toiletries from the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and never looking back. But apparently not shutting the door on his curiosity, some incorrigible need to survey the damage.

The accounting department was going to have a field day when they saw the bill for the clean-up of this house.

She turns back to her laptop and finishes up the last of her report. Efficiency today allows for relaxation tomorrow. Well, with Mulder, relaxation is never fully on the table. But at least with the report out of the way, she can use their travel day tomorrow for catching up on sleep. Perhaps she’ll take a bath, as well. She needs a little indulgence, and even though she’s showered tonight, she still can’t shake the imagery of blood and dirt and god knows what else around her, flying around the room, infiltrating her skin. Yes, a bath sounds nice. Necessary.  
  
***  
  
She closes the laptop, removes her glasses from her face, and begins to refile the papers around her. He takes that as an invitation to join her, perching himself carefully, but making it appear effortless, at the foot of the bed. This is just going to be a casual, post-case discussion. Planning their schedule for the morning, knowing that the movers will be coming to pack everything up and return it to the San Diego field office. How much time to allot in order to make it to the airport an hour before their flight. Nothing special.

In the top left corner, Dana Scully, science wiz, fact-checker, and breathtakingly beautiful with her face scrubbed clean and her freckles exposed. In the bottom right corner, Fox Mulder, spooky alien hunter, truth-seeker extraordinaire, and suddenly clammy and trepidatious at the realization of their proximity coinciding with their location.

Nope. Nothing special here. Just your average partners, though currently, perhaps, at odds with each other, about to have a normal, ordinary conversation. In a queen-sized bed that belongs to neither of them, but that they’re both trying to claim. Yeah, right.

He slowly stretches himself out, sinking into the softness of the mattress, bringing the perfectly pristine pillow he grabbed from the otherwise-ruined bed up to tuck underneath his head. It smells like her.

It’s enough. In the unspoken battle of giving each other reasons to stay, Round 1 goes to Dana Scully.  
  
***  
  
“Sure, Mulder, make yourself at home.” She suspects her sarcasm will be rampant tonight. Anything to distract her from what appears to be happening, unfolding right in front of her.

This… isn’t new. Just unfamiliar enough to make them apprehensive. Not uncomfortable. But their senses are heightened, both fully aware, of what they’re doing. She’s not welcoming him with open arms, but she’s not going to push him away, either. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. The fact that he looks so soft, inviting, with his towel-dried spiked hair, gray cotton T-shirt, flannel pajama bottoms. It’s making any argument against incredibly difficult, near impossible.

Two can play at this game, apparently. Round 2, Fox Mulder.  
  
***  
  
She shifts slightly to pull back the duvet and the top sheet, poised to crawl under them and call it a night. She stacks her glasses on top of the folder of case notes, and the folder on top of her laptop, rolling over to place them on the bedside table. Just before she moves to shut off the lamp, he speaks.

“Open the drawer.” His voice seems sultry, playing back his words in his head, but he doesn’t mean for it to come off that way.

It’ll throw her for a loop, he’s sure. She turns just her head, shooting him a questioning look, but he only offers a soft smile. They’ll have plenty of time to reveal their secrets. Now, he wants her to play along. All thoughts of planning for tomorrow have gone out the window.

He closes his eyes in anticipation, slight unease over her potential reaction not just of the gift, but of its timeliness, more than a week overdue. He doesn’t want her to think he forgot, he just never found the right moment. He hears her pull the drawer open, her hand coming into contact with its contents, the only contents, the soft thud of wood against wood as it shuts. He exhales.  
  
***  
  
The velvet square in her palm worries her. She already has a ring from him, albeit, fake. It occurs to her that the ring is still around her finger, and his, glancing quickly at his left hand, is still there, too. The case is over, they no longer have to pretend to be married. So why are they still wearing the rings?

She lifts the lid and peers into the box. Pearl earrings, yellow-gold posts. Her first thought is one of gratitude regarding her sensitivity to some metals, how these particular earrings might fare with her skin. Her second thought is that, from feeling their weight as she removes one from the box, the pearls might be real, and the gold might be filled, not plated. She’s awed, bringing her other hand up to her mouth to conceal her gasp. “Mulder, they’re beautiful.”

Round 3, Fox Mulder.  
  
***  
  
“They were Samantha’s.”

As soon as it’s out of his mouth, he realizes he shouldn’t have said it.

She snaps the lid closed and shoves the box toward him immediately, as if suddenly it had become tainted, caught fire. “I can’t accept these.”

He expected this. “Scully, they’ve been sitting unused in my mother’s house for over twenty years. She doesn’t want them, I asked. Besides, they would look nice on you.”

Her hand is still covering the top of the box, after she placed it in his. He moves to bring his other hand to her chin, but she looks up at him at that precise moment, eyes swimming with threatening tears. His heart fills, but breaks, all at once.

Round 4, Dana Scully.  
  
***  
  
“But why?”  
  
“I made a joke, when I gave you the keychain, about turning alien implants into a matched set of earrings. But these go better with your suits.”

_ So they’re a birthday gift _ , she deduces. She’s supposed to be mad at him, for trusting Diana over her and then booking a flight before 7:00am the morning after her birthday, for not celebrating with her. But then he goes and does something like this. It’s too much. “Mulder…”

He sits up, and her eyes go wide as he removes the backing from one of the earrings. Steady hands guide the post to poke through the first hole in her left ear, fastening the stud once the earring is in place, the same process repeated for the other side. He tucks the front strands of her hair behind her ears, examines her. “See, they go great with your face.”

She notices that he isn’t nervous.  
  
***  
  
“Mulder, that’s terrible.”

She’s cute when she matches his deflections of sincerity with her own, accompanying with faint huffs of laughter, though he wouldn’t dare tell her that.

They’re not meant to be an apologetic gift, hoping to right all the wrongs he has done toward her lately. He just thought that something as beautiful as those earrings wasn’t meant to go unnoticed, unused, collecting dust in an untouched, upstairs bedroom of a house that was once his home, though never quite felt it. And he knew that their beauty wouldn’t overshadow hers, but rather complement it. He simply wanted her to have them, and a birthday was the perfect excuse to give them to her.

His hands are still on her face, thumbs stroking her cheeks, tracing her jawline. He’s going to memorize every last one of her freckles. He is earnest, “So you’ll keep them?”

She covers her hands with his and nods. Let's a single tear go.  
  
***  
  
He reaches behind him to grab the pillow he brought with him, and she uses this time to wipe away the wetness from her cheek. She doesn’t need to tell him that it’s okay for him to stay, he already knows.  


They lift his side of the covers in tandem, and she watches as he slides beneath the cool sheets and adjust the pillows. It’s endearing, the way he’s made himself at home in a bed with her. She could get used to this. She doesn’t dare let herself, though, pushing the thought away as quickly as it entered her mind. Rather, she turns back toward the lamp, pulling the chain and welcoming the darkness. He does the same.

The switch, certainly, has been flicked. She’s not ready to face those feelings, though, so tonight, it remains off. The earrings, however, remain on.

There’s enough space between them, when they finally settle, that they’re not touching, though they are facing each other. But were one of them to move in the middle of the night, it’s likely that fingers, feet, may brush.  
  
***  
  
“Goodnight, Mulder,” she whispers. And he remembers how whole she makes him feel.

“Goodnight, Scully.”  
  
***  
  
Round 5 goes to both of them.


End file.
